


that autumn scent

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: couple of fitts from brooklyn [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Steve, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Established Relationship, Languages and Linguistics, M/M, PWP, alpha bucky, bucky puts the sex in pansexual, fantasy homophobia, pre-WWII, steve is sure as the sun rises in the east pretty queer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:53:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky starts sweating around eight, when the sun's really up, and smells himself same as he can smell all the other fitts on this dock crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that autumn scent

**Author's Note:**

> I owe some intellectual debt on the social structure to fresne's Phrygian worldbuilding (BBC Sherlock, John/Sherlock and Irene/Sherlock), and to Bad Samaritan and Valyria's "Alpha/Alpha verse" (SPN, Dean/Castiel).
> 
> Thanks are owed to sexomancy, who gave me some tips on how hermaphroditic A/O might function biologically, if it were at all possible. I've been inadvertently subtle, but it's there.
> 
> Further thanks are owed to lodejaria, who read this over for "does it suck"-itude.
> 
> On the doctrine that if alpha/omega was sufficiently common to merit an actual word, I figured the concept would be described succinctly in a single word that encapsulated both "gender" (as we have it) and "Greek-letter status" (as the fandom trope has it), similar to how "gay" refers by default to homosexual men and "lesbian" to homosexual women. As such, I've cobbled together some words with Germanic roots (since everyday concepts in English are for the most part descended from that family, not Latin or Greek) to use in place of the Greek-letter designators. The offensive overtones of the terms for omegas are deliberate and intended to be in line with real-world sexism, extended to fit any individual theoretically capable of reproduction.
> 
> Male alpha: Fitt  
> Female alpha: Chuse  
> Male omega: Nith  
> Female omega: Count  
> "Man" and "woman" refer to our-world-standard humans.

Bucky starts sweating around eight, when the sun's really up and the autumn chill starts burning off, and he can smell himself same as he can smell all the other fitts on this crew. Like strength and work and skin, bitter and rich.

It gets worse during lunch, after Rob takes off his jacket to enjoy the sun, and the men make loud jokes about what fall must be like for fitts.

Janey's the only chuse on the crew, is married besides, nith at home with two kids, and she stinks something else. 

"Takin' my two weeks startin' tomorrow," she says, lighting her cigarette, elbowing Peter when he tries to snag it out of her hand. "Mike smelling like sugar already. Sent the kids to my sister's."

Bucky swallows. The apartment smelled of Chas's heat all weekend, even after he'd left to spend the next two weeks with this chuse down on the Lower East Side he's been seeing. Bucky's keeping his mouth shut on that one, doesn't think it'll end well, but before Chas left he stank up the whole place like honey and sweat.

Bucky's been feeling prickly for a day or so from it. Thinks he maybe glimpsed Steve looking at him again this morning, considering tilt to his chin and eyes narrowed, and it made his gut go cold-tense with anticipation.

"Lucky," Carl says, smile filthy, brushing the last crumbs from his sandwich off his hands.

Bucky grins, turns it into his shoulder so Janey doesn't jab him for cheek. "Careful you don't get another one out of it."

She snorts. "Yeah, no kidding."

 

 

There's a bathroom and running water down the end of the hall at their apartment, so when he gets back he grabs a bucket and spot-cleans himself to get the worst of the grime off his arms and face. Changes his clothes. He still stinks like he's on the edge of going into rut, but at least this way it's not as obvious. 

At least the apartment doesn't smell like Chas anymore. 

Steve's left a pot on the stove, full of clean water, and he must've gone grocery shopping. There's bread on the counter, smelling like it was baked today. A block of sharp cheese to bring for lunch at the docks, a dozen eggs, dried beans, potatoes and onions. Bucky lets his fingers rest over the curves of the eggs, careful. His mom used to cook them some mornings after payday, fried up in a skillet with pepper and salt. Steve must've been feeling flush, to buy eggs.

The door groans open behind Steve, lugging a bag of apples that bounce on the floor when he puts 'em down, even though he's trying to be gentle. 

"They're the last of the previous shipment," Steve explains, rubbing at his back. "Got in new ones from upstate today, he said."

"Lucky for us." Or more like the fruitseller just took pity on Steve. He gave Steve's mom credit up until she died, Bucky's sure of it.

Steve crouches to sort through the bag, looking for the one with the most bruises to eat first. His ears are flushed pink, and he's still wearing his coat. Bucky takes two steps forward, tucks his fingers underneath the collar. Steve's skin is warm against his fingertips, hair smooth against the palm of his hand.

"Apartment doesn't smell like Chas anymore," Bucky says. 

Steve snorts. "Instead it smells like the docks."

"I washed!"

"Did you?" Steve puts the apple in his hand down, folds forward onto his knees, grabs Bucky's hand and presses his lips to Bucky's palm, then his wrist. Drags him downwards and smells the inside of his elbow, lingering, and then the cut of his armpit, a long heavy breath or five while Bucky wraps his arms around him. "You still stink."

"Sure I do. Take your coat off." 

"Can't, if you're gonna keep clinging." But he laughs and starts unbuttoning his coat, Bucky's hands following after down his chest. He smells, too, just as much as Bucky, but good. Bucky presses his face into Steve's neck to kiss the tendons there. Fitts getting along well enough in rut to room together is one thing; showing up to work smelling of another fitt's rut and with love bites all down your neck is another. 

"You smell good," Steve murmurs, shedding the coat but not making any move to stand and hang it up again.

"You." Bucky strokes the length of his back. They're not in full rut, not yet; right now all he wants is to curl up in Steve's scent and the fragile beat of his heart, his shallow breathing, and hold and be held by him. It'll make him hard eventually - he's twenty, not eight, and they'll be egging each other on soon enough – but for now, this is it. "Should eat something."

"Was gonna, before you decided to get fresh." Steve kisses his temple.

"I'm not the one checkin' which of us _smells_ , like it's not us both." He moves his hands around to Steve's chest to fumble at his shirt buttons. They're cool against Bucky's fingertips.

A nip at his cheekbone. "Dunno how you can smell me over yourself." 

"Used to trying to find where you are so you don't get yourself killed." He means it to sound light, but it doesn't, too many close calls between bouts of being sick and bouts of getting his stuffing beat out.

"Bucky," low, and Steve's fingers are cool as he cups Bucky's jaw to pull him up for a kiss.

They disentangle from hugging on the floor long enough to boil a couple of potatoes and some cabbage each, chase it up with apples, kissing intent and lingering between bites. Bucky gets half-hard at some point, one hand curled at the back of Steve's neck, the other on his waist, back cricked from the awkward angle.

He brushes their noses together, smiling, lips chapped. "Hey."

Steve hums. Eyes barely cracked open. "You're right, it's late. Should go to bed."

He squeezes the back of Steve's neck, laughing. "Wasn't what I was gonna say." 

"I know." Steve kisses the tip of his nose, then says the way Bucky's Aunt Sarah used to when he'd gotten his clothes especially dirty, "You're a menace, Jamie Barnes."

"You know it," Bucky says, thinking about the way she said it after the first couple times he came slinking back home smelling like perfume. She'd been clever, Aunt Sarah. Knew before he did that he had a taste for Steve Rogers, five feet of spit and smart mouth and fitt instincts and righteousness.

He kisses that smart mouth again, again, before Steve pulls him into bed. 

"Gonna have to be up early. Should make it quick," Bucky says, not trying real hard for responsible when he's allowed, now of all times, to be anything but.

"Can sleep when we're dead," Steve informs him, and goes for his own belt.

 

Bucky wakes up before dawn and the bed, the whole damn apartment, reeks of him and Steve in rut. Sex, too, though not as much.

He kisses his way down Steve's neck, breathless and hard, but Steve doesn't do much more than grumble _goway_ and pull the covers back up, so Bucky gets out of bed and dresses and eats some of the bread. He should go to work. Will probably lose his job if he doesn't, being unmarried and not supposed to need rut-break.

He ruffles a hand through Steve's hair before he leaves. Takes lunch with him.

"Whoo-ee!" Rob says, waving a hand in front of his nose when he smells Bucky. "Jesus, what's got you all worked up?"

Bucky shrugs. "Territory marking. Roommate's another fitt. Can't help it."

Janey isn't there to contradict him. If the others avoid him for the rest of the day, that's fine and no surprise. He wouldn't want to be around himself either, this time of year, if it wasn't his skin.

 

"I could smell you coming up the stairs," Steve says, once Bucky's closed the door behind him. Steve's pupils are huge in the low light, where he's sketching drafts of signs for a butcher up in Queens who's some relation of Mr. Rosso next door.

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, and goes to wash up a little at the bucket. He gets as far as his hands, then, sliding a glance over at Steve, strips.

His chest feels hot under his hands, which are still cool from outside, and the water's uncomfortably cold, drawing goosebumps. He scrubs his cheeks, chin, ears. Considers washing his armpits, but looks at Steve pretending not to look at him, and doesn't. His back, what he can reach, and then his hand falls in a pretend accident to his dick. Behind that, cupping his balls, which feel as huge and sensitive as they always do at the beginning of rut, and a little wet with whatever natural slick he gets this time of year.

He closes his eyes, just set on enjoying the feeling, before Steve gets up off the bed and comes to stand behind him, resting a hand on Bucky's hip. 

"Yeah," Bucky says, and Steve plasters himself up against Bucky's back, hand sliding to curl around his dick. Steve's breath is hot on his shoulder blades, gusting moist against his spine.

He can feel Steve's dick up hard against his thigh, and he rubs back against it and then forward into Steve's grip, listening to the weight of Steve's breathing. "Tighter." 

Steve squeezes a little harder, making Bucky gasp. "Should do this in bed."

"Yeah, okay." They separate, stumble to the bed with its rumpled, come-stained sheets, and pull the covers up over themselves. 

Steve, face buried against Bucky's shoulder, makes a disgusted noise. "You smell," he complains, and then, "The way you _smell_ ," lower, heated-up.

"You should talk," Bucky says, because this wrapped up in each other and in their sheets he can smell Steve too, the thick sex and flesh and muscle of rut. He holds on, hands on Steve's back, touching all along their chests, dicks rubbing up against each other.

Steve snorts. "Mary Halloran asked me if I was even in rut yet."

"Mary Halloran," Bucky says, exhaling hard against Steve's temple when Steve grabs his ass and squeezes, "is too wrapped up in her own to know anything about yours." He rocks against Steve, then slings a leg over his hip, trying to get closer. Steve's dick might as well be digging into his stomach, and he likes it.

"Or maybe she's not -" Steve starts, until Bucky kisses him again to shut him up. Buries his hand in Steve's hair to keep him close, hair soft and thin between his fingers. 

They have to stop kissing pretty quick, Steve getting out of breath, but it's good, warm and close, mouths open and breathing each other in. Steve's fingers slip from his ass to between his legs, brushing against the heavy rut-tense weight of his balls.

"Yeah," Bucky says, "okay, okay," and Steve stills before pushing between them in. 

"Fuck." He clenches around Steve's fingers, thrusting up against his hip to try to reestablish a rhythm.

"Yeah." Steve licks his lips. Bucky can feel where that tongue brushes against his own skin. 

"Move." 

"Nah." Steve drags his fingers out, pushes back in, so Bucky shifts up Steve's body to get them out and rolls Steve onto his back to get more leverage.

Steve gasps when Bucky lies down on him, but it's the good kind, and Bucky kisses the corner of his jaw, breathing sweat-fitt-rut in from his neck as he starts to move again. His heart's pounding. He wishes Steve's fingers were back in him, as awkward as it would be.

His hip's gonna have bruises from Steve's dick when they're done, it feels like. He hopes his leaves one on Steve's.

"You play dirty," Steve hisses, grin in his voice, trying to pull Bucky closer with both hands on his ass, fingers of one of them leaving slick little smears on his skin there, too.

Bucky nips at his throat, not so much it'll bruise, then licks the same spot, salt on his tongue. He can smell the mess they're spreading between them. "Says you." 

Steve laughs, speeding up, jerking into Bucky's motions. Bucky heaves a breath against his throat, every one of Steve's bones practically digging into him, and gives himself up, coming bright and tense between them.

Steve's still moving against him through it, and Bucky drags his hands through Steve's hair, kissing his neck while Steve rubs off against his hip, little soft grunts making their way out of his throat. It's adorable, is what it is, and Bucky smiles and takes a deep breath when Steve comes, smelling them wrapped up around each other in sex and in sleep.

Steve pets his back some before Bucky rolls off him, onto his side. Brushes his thumb along the curve at the back of Steve's ear, and doesn't even try to keep the smile off his face.

"You reek," Steve says, twist at the corner of his mouth from trying not to laugh.

"Asshole," Bucky says, ruffling his hair with one hand, and gets out of bed for the cloth to clean them both up.


End file.
